by Frank Bill
Manny nodded and said, “A gift for the King.” He turned to Chub and Minister. “Decapitate the other two also. And wrap them with their shirts.” He looked at the driver, and Cotto realized at that moment what his father had been when he was soldiering, what Chub, Minister, and Ernesto were. Savages.
“What about the others in the rocks?” asked Chub.
“Let them warn the King of our coming. We’ve the upper hand now,” Manny told him.
Reminded of those times when he and his mother were left for long periods of time without Manny. Or when Cotto was awakened in the deep falls of night. His father making a quick exit. Returning days and days later. Sometimes distant in his movements. Silent and not talkative. Other times he seemed rattled and irritated. Making only the smallest mentions of how short a person’s span of life could be. How quick and easy it was to end an existence.
Cotto recognized how his father and the men were trained for killing. Manny had been the leader. Had turned that switch off to be with Cotto and Kabeza. Shunned that world only to have that same unit of measure turned back on when Kabeza was murdered. Manny told the driver, “Now you will lead me to the King or you’ll end up like your gringo passengers.”
And from then on, Cotto knew that he wanted to be like his father.
* * *
As they passed through the black iron gates that bolted and connected to the bedrock walls of privacy with the colors of gold, tan, and flint scattered about the mortar, whirls of heated dust rained about the enclosed area as truck tires trekked and mashed forward toward the structure of a baked-stucco home of dimensions. Resting like a fortress, the home sat without buildings surrounding it; horses were railed in by posts and pickets. Gringo men stood upon watchtowers or outposts, others walked the property, came from everywhere like insects to sweets toward Manny and his men. Some unholstered pistols, others pointed automatic weapons.
Manny wheeled the cattle truck that carried the peasants and the packs of dope to the circle of glossed-over concrete combined with pebbles of pea gravel. A bronzed sculpture of Pancho Villa rested within the drive’s center. Behind Manny came the second vehicle with Ernesto at the wheel, the bed piled with headless men. The King’s men closed in on the two vehicles. Manny came out of the truck slow, raising his hands as he slung a pack over his shoulder. Cotto came from the passenger’s side with the wounded gringo, his hands bound behind him. Ernesto, Chub, and Minister fanned out from the gringo vehicle. Tossed their pistols to the dirt. Raised their hands with smirks on their faces.
One of the King’s men closed in on Cotto, looked to the gringo. “Fram, the others, where are they?”
Manny glanced over the truck’s hood, told him, “They’ve been piled like kindling for a fire in the other truck’s bed.”
The man looked at Manny with his burnt complexion of stubble. “I wasn’t talking to you.” And the man motioned with his hand to the other men and ordered, “Kay Dog, check the trucks. Anvil, get Fram off his feet. Cut his restraints. Hog Head, get these men patted down and corralled.”
Three men came forward. One grabbed Fram. Helped him limp away from the trucks as he whimpered and bled. His wound seeped with every step he took. Had turned from a red to a dark liquid that was nearly black, and he cried, “They’re without mind, they’re without mind. These men are … they’re barbaric.” Anvil dragged Fram. Kay Dog helped the peasants from the farm truck. “Vámonos, vámonos.” Several other men grabbed the peasants by their arms, led them toward the stables. Distanced them from Manny and his men, who were being patted down about their legs, backs, and chests. Poked by rifle ends into the soft spots of their bodies. Stepping away from Ernesto and the others, Kay Dog viewed the bed of the truck, took in the dead. Snapshotting with his eyes the gored and veiny necks without heads. Traced their saucy stains down to desert-spotted shit-kickers. Turning away from the bed, Kay Dog dropped his AR-15 to the ground. Came with a mouthful of odds and ends he could no longer stomach, weighted the earth with chunks.
One of the men who searched Ernesto, Cotto, and the others stepped toward the vehicle’s bed, caught only a glimpse, saw the unsearched pack hanging from Manny, started to approach him from around the other side of the truck. Manny listened to the footfalls while one of the other men tried to take the pack from his shoulder. Manny held the ruck. Telling the man, “This is for the King. Not a gringo fuck.” The man raised his rifle at Manny. Behind Manny, Ernesto, Chub, and Minister lunged toward the other man with the rifle, fists laced tighter than a baseball’s insides as Cotto watched the men bombard the man with knuckles and knees to the ground. All rifles were raised at them. From the enormous cookie-baked home came a man with a raised hand, shouting, “No! Leave them, leave them.”
Manny revealed a psychotic grin. Eyed the shape coming down the wide tiled steps of the home. One foot fell in front of the other. The clomp of his snakeskin boots punched across the rock drive with the tick of dog’s paws, two hounds of black, tan, and white, who stopped when the man stopped, sat on their rears. Standing within the heat of the day, he was a medium-sized man of Spanish descent. Appeared hard as limestone, square shouldered, his black locks short, bristled, and parted down the center. A handlebar mustache plotted above his lip; cheeks looked to have been tunneled out by termites. He wore a white T-shirt beneath a black button-up that held pearl snaps, not buttons. A gold-plated .45 rested in the hem of his pants front, pushed into his gut. He eyed Manny with contempt and held no blink of fear, only power that begged mercy from other men as he arched his right arm up, reached, and pushed away the AR-15 pointed at Manny’s brain. “Kentucky Colonel, lower your rifle.”
The colonel’s face was laced with a marathon runner’s heartbeat. “They’ve wounded Fram and cut the goddamned heads off the others.”
Anger streaked the King’s face as though he’d eaten something tart and foreign and he asked Manny, “Is what he tells me of truth?”
Manny replied, “I know not the names, but yes, the men you employ have been disassembled and strewn in the bed of their truck.”
“You killed some of my best men. And my product, you steal it. Other than being a tough and malicious son of a bitch, what am I to think?”
The two hounds sat beside the King’s left and right, bared taffy-pink gums and bleach-white teeth as they panted from the humidity.
“Your product I did not steal. I delivered it for your eyes to see.” Manny paused, pointing at the walkers who’d been removed and separated from him and his men, standing off in the distance, being searched outside of an enormous barn. “It is with the peasants and unscathed, as you can see as your gringos are removing them from the packs. But you’re a peasant short.”
The King pursed his lips, nodded. Patted each of his dog’s skulls. Snapped his fingers to the man who’d pressured Manny’s skull with the automatic rifle, Kentucky Colonel. Told him, “Go get a count on inventory, see if what he proclaims is true.” Manny watched Kentucky give him a grizzled smirk as he stepped into his train of sight. Only to step away, move toward the peasants, who stood in the heat close to the stable of horses some forty feet away, along with most of the King’s men. The cellophane squares of dope removed and lying on the ground.
The King eyed Manny, stepped away from him, the hounds followed, wagging their tails. The King caught a glimpse of his dead men, came back to Manny, plotted his stance before him. His shiny pistol removed from his waist, Cotto could do nothing but watch from the other side of the vehicle, wondering if this was everyone’s end, or only the beginning.
Behind the King, Kentucky Colonel stood before the peasants. Going over the rucks, pointing and counting, kneeling down. Inspecting the huge rounded squares of cellophane. Grabbing one, he held it up for the King to view. But he had his back turned, was eyeing Manny. His face swelled with repulsion. Kentucky Colonel hollered, “The product is all here and accounted for.”
Manny looked down at the hounds, spoke, “Your dogs, they’re a hunting breed, walkers?”
The King spoke direct and mad. “Yes. Walker hounds. A gift from new business associates in the Midwest, man goes by McGill, Bellmont McGill. And his associate Dillard Alcorn. But we’re not standing here to speak about the breed of my dogs.”
Manny placed a thumb beneath the strap at his shoulder, the King lifted the .45 to Manny’s face. And Manny said, “I’ve a gift for you.”
The King stepped away, kept the pistol pointed to Manny’s head, told him, “Slow.”
Manny lifted the pack from his shoulder with his right, told the King, “Your people, they murdered my wife.” Holding the ruck’s weight before him, he kneeled and sat the pack on the ground.
Cotto could no longer keep the tension bottled up. Across the truck’s hood he erupted with “My mother!”
The King pursed his lips, looked over at Cotto. “You speak of the Ox?”
Still kneeling, Manny unbuckled the ruck, said, “Yes, the Ox.”
The King’s voice sounded careless as he exhaled with his words, not giving two shits. “He was an ex-sicario. You know what a sicario is?”
Manny reached into the ruck and told the King, “Hitman for the cartels.”
“Yes,” the King said. “He had little boundaries and a taste for the attractive whether they were attracted to him or not. Your wife must’ve been a beauty.”
Manny’s eyes went to slits. His demeanor arctic as he grabbed the contents within the ruck. “I delivered him to his end.”
“That you did, as I suspected this after being told of the fires that were tamed. The porous carbon of bone-shaped outlines that were uncovered. But it is enough of this bullshit. Why are you here delivering my dope, offering your hides? Is it vengeance you wish to procure? ’Cause if it is, well, you’ve gotten plenty for you and your pissant of a spawn, ’cause now you’re as good as dead.”
Manny elongated back up to standing; with the bloody mess in his right hand, he told the King, “I want a future for my son, me and my men.”
“And how do you elect to have that, with one of my men’s heads in your hands?”
“No, I’m not asking. I’m telling.”
The King chuckled at Manny’s words. “You think you, your men, and boy can drive to my land, think that I will just let you take all that I’ve created? You’ve killed my men, men with families, what am I to tell their wives and children?”
“The same that my son and I were told when my wife was taken from us. That the man who took her from us had little boundaries.” Manny let his words soak in. Then he finished with, “But we’re not of the cartel, we’re ex-Kaibil commandos from Guatemala.”
The King was an aged sculpture in a museum. Posturing a solid but silent opposition. Looked down at the mess of a head that Manny held at his side. Then across the hood at Cotto, where something had fermented and taken shape within him. Something meticulous and calculated. Something methodical. The days of violence and loss had congealed. A tear spilt down his cheek. Separated the young boy who was pushing toward a young man. Something had snapped.
Manny caught the movement from the corner of his right eye, knowing what was being executed. Cotto started to step from the truck’s passenger’s side, walking past the headlights and grill, toward the King. Manny reacted. Swung the decapitated head at the King’s pistol. Knocked it from his grip. Then pulled the transmitter from the mouth of the decapitated head, hollered, “To your knees, to your knees!”
Confusion ran over the face of the King until Manny thumbed the button on the bloody black box. Screamed to Cotto, “Down!”
One explosion after another decimated the packs. Arms, legs, heads, and insides of the peasants combusted with the King’s men. Particled about the air. Creating an anatomy of bloodshed and dust. The dogs ran from the entropy, back up the steps of the home. Cotto crawled over the ground, felt and reached for the King’s pistol. Ernesto, Chub, and Minister felt their way to the vehicle they’d wheeled in with, reached beneath the headless bodies, and pulled out the automatic weapons. Manny had the King by his locks. Grasped and groped him to standing. Cotto pressed the pistol into the King’s mouth. From a distance, horses reared and screamed. Those men who’d survived the blasting moaned. Ernesto, Chub, and Minister ran toward the barn, began sweeping the area, filling anything that moved or breathed with bullet holes, shooting men from their outposts. Manny looked to Cotto. “It is time for a new King.” Took the pistol from Cotto’s grip, thumbed the hammer, watched the King’s eyes burn like comets in the night, and told him, “This is for Kabeza.” Tugged the trigger. A mess of organ, bone, and fluid smeared over the grit or earth. The King’s weight dropped. Manny stood with Cotto. Listened to the growl of the hounds who sat in the home’s entrance, watching. Cotto questioned Manny, “Father, should we silence their snarls, show them their endings too?” And Manny told him, “No, we should fillet the King, let the new master feed them their old master.”
That was the day Cotto’s apprenticeship was sealed. A day of bloodshed. Killing most of those who’d worked for the King except for Cutthroat, a human interrogator and butcher. The King’s wife and children were fed the same fate as his, a bullet. It was part of Manny’s madness. Someone lives on until someone stronger comes along and takes all that another has built. That someone was Manny Ramos.
He ran drugs and humans from south of the border, implanted them in the Midwest. Enlisted the help of other commandos he’d served with. Taught Cotto the trade. Trained him in soldering. In tracking and recon. In killing and fighting. Once he’d had the reins to uphold the rules of the savage and the salvaged, Manny migrated to Indiana with Bellmont McGill. A man who at first wanted quality drugs. Something more than a rural outhouse cook could offer from separating cold medicine and battery acid. Something he could purchase. Resell for bigger profits in surrounding counties. He also wanted to add flavor to his bare-knuckle boxing tournament with dogs fighting men. And Manny did all of this with the help of Ernesto, Chub, and Minister. Muscled others. Delivered drugs to the small backwoods bars where bare-knuckle free-for-alls were held amongst the surviving class throughout Kentucky and Indiana.
Cotto recruited gang members from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, young men who knew the routes of smuggling and survival. Kids long abandoned by their families. Young men who wanted more than the streets they ran upon but held no mercy to others. Those who understood territory. And he thought of that day when word came from Ernesto, as he sat in a leather chair, the buzz of ink vibrating from a needle that lined and shadowed textures about his forearm in the Southside Tattoo parlor as Bart Willis created the shapes of faces without meat or eyes or hair. Bony and skeletal. Symbols of death. And Ernesto told Cotto, “Your father has been murdered.”
Through the door he stepped, those memories of their time before all of this ruin. Plotting and planning, he came back to the Midwest not just to reap vengeance upon those who had a role in his father’s slaying: Purcell the prophet and Jarhead Earl, thieves who’d robbed the Donnybrook, viewers to the man who shot his father dead in the face, Chainsaw Angus. The man who’d take Bellmont McGill’s life as well. But also to scourge the Midwest with his drugs, to overshadow a deal with Plato Reign, a CIA mercenary, and rule the territory with his own brand of soldiers and whatever he deemed necessary. No outside gangs or dealers could do business unless they went through him. Used his drugs. His prices.
But it’d taken so much time to track these men down. Angus being the most difficult. Unseen. Unheard. Rumor was he lay hidden in Harrison County with a Chinaman. Purcell and Jarhead had been a different story; every so often rumor of their trespass came about, letting Cotto know they were bunkered down somewhere in the surrounding counties until Cotto spotted, followed, and erased their existence, thanks to the Pentecost.
Now, entering the confines of Bill’s chicken coop, a place where he was known to detain women and children for Cotto. Forced to become a pair of eyes and ears after Cotto’d taken his wife while Bill begged for mercy.
The waft within the barn-sided walls was suffering. Smells of piss and shit and the eruption of bloat and bloodshot from the heft of man who lay about the hard earth with a thin coating of dust. Complexion seared with sweat, his arms blown up like lengths of zucchini or squash that had overripened, sat too long before picking. Only it was not from the labor that creates muscle but from venom. Around him one daughter kneeled, the others lay looking worse than their sire. The one daughter held a cold, ragged square of cotton and a bucket of liquid to dip it within. Horror glazed the girl’s eyes as she took in the shape and appearance of Cotto, who raised his eyebrows, with his skeletal complexion and the ink of thorns around his head as though he were a deity.
“The Pentecost has fallen.”
Bill’s chest rose and dropped as he looked to Cotto. Wheezing escaped from his mouth as though he were finding his breath in a kazoo; amongst the sweating and slobbering, his lips parted with words salivating from his tongue. “It is another devil who has arrived. I’ve fought the other and survived his magic, but if I must battle another, God will not be so kind as to spare me, but He will surely take me to the heavens, and for that I am prepared.”
Cotto shook his head and laughed. “Who might this devil that you speak of be? Is he the one who has brought disfigurement and bloat to you and your offsprings’ appearances?”
Bill struggled to speak. “A boy who has grown into a man, a man whose father and himself helped me more over the years than the count of hog I’ve gutted and butchered in my life. Boy goes by the moniker of Dorn, Van Dorn.”
Cotto’s eyes lit up like two bonfires infused by propellant. His pulse ignited to heart-attack beats and he asked, “When?”
“When what?” Bill rasped.
“When did this Dorn encroach you?”
“Long … long past the disappearance of this day.”
Cotto shook his head. “I need not your hick scripture of dialect, one day or two hours or more? How much time has elapsed?”
